Sheltered Garden

I have had enough.
    I gasp for breath.

    Every way ends, every road,
    every foot-path leads at last
    to the hill-crest —
    then you retrace your steps,
    or find the same slope on the other side,
    precipitate.

    I have had enough —
  border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
  herbs, sweet-cress.

  O for some sharp swish of a branch —
  there is no scent of resin
  in this place,
  no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
  aromatic, astringent —
  only border on border of scented pinks.

  Have you seen fruit under cover
  that wanted light —
  pears wadded in cloth,
  protected from the frost,
  melons, almost ripe,
  smothered in straw?

  Why not let the pears cling
  to the empty branch?
  All your coaxing will only make
  a bitter fruit —
  let them cling, ripen of themselves,
  test their own worth,
  nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
  to fall at last but fair
  with a russet coat.

  Or the melon —
  let it bleach yellow
  in the winter light,
  even tart to the taste —
  it is better to taste of frost —
  the exquisite frost —
  than of wadding and of dead grass.

  For this beauty,
  beauty without strength,
  chokes out life.
  I want wind to break,
  scatter these pink-stalks,
  snap off their spiced heads,
  fling them about with dead leaves —
  spread the paths with twigs,
  limbs broken off,
  trail great pine branches,
  hurled from some far wood
  right across the melon-patch,
  break pear and quince —
  leave half-trees, torn, twisted
  but showing the fight was valiant.

  O to blot out this garden
  to forget, to find a new beauty
  in some terrible
  wind-tortured place.